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Message # 1883.3

Subject: Re: Codec wars

Date: Mon 20/01/03 08:50:11 GMT

Name: siren

Email: siren@pi.be

Website:

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Anthony,

We live in a world of computer, things are changing, improving. There is a big diference even in DIVX4, DIVX5 and Xvid. It are all codecs, but they differ in performance, compression, quality. It is hard to say which one really is the best. At first everybody thought that DIVX4 was going to be a standard. There was some hardware special developped to play them like the xcard from realmagic.

But it didn't work out, because of the release of divx5 and later xvid. There is even another one comming up, from microsoft, but we ll see who is going to use this codec. Rumors are telling it is even better than DIVX.

I know that sometimes installing codecs, and other things that make some problems of your computer. But it won't be the codecs that make the problem. Some codecs on the net, like the free divx5 codecs contain spyware. This does slow down the computer a lot and gives you a lot of popups, warning messages and so on. You can solve this problem by installing ad-aware from the website http://www.lavasoft.de. So if you haven't done that yet, it gets about time.

Greetz,

Siren.

In reply to Message (1883)

Codec wars

By AnthonyX - anthonyx@jowc.net Sun 19/01/03 13:51:00 GMT

Website:

I don't mean this to be a rant or a complaint... more of an observation and an attempt to understand what's going on...

I've noticed quite a proliferation of codecs over the past couple of years, and it seems that as new contributors arrive on the scene to share their material, as often as not, they render it using a codec nobody's heard of before. I look forward to seeing all the material being offered up, but I'm not that comfortable with downloading a seemingly endless array of new codecs to do it.

By my understanding of information theory, there is only so much one can achieve re: image compression without sacrificing quality. I believe that the array of popularly available codecs for the past year represent more-or-less the limit of what can be done; any further improvements would only be incremental - not of any real practical value. Also, they perform well enough on most platforms that again, any further improvements are unlikely to yield any appreciable benefit.

So... with no real benefits coming from this "latest and greatest" stream of codecs, can't we standardize on one or two or three of the myriad of codecs most of us already have on our computers, instead of adding yet another one to the mix?

It seems to me almost like an arms race... just when consumers have settled in to the latest emerging "standard", providers moving forward to something new, which consumers can't use (until they find a way to move forward). I know this isn't the intent, but I think it does tend to be the effect.

Why am I making a big deal out of it? What's so difficult about going to www.supernewcodec.com to download it? Well, two things: (1) I need this computer to earn a living; I can't risk installing software which might make my computer unstable, and (2) It seems to me that codecs are a great opportunity to introduce a virus into a computer; I'm not saying it's been done, but I think it may only be a matter of time.

Any thoughts on this? I'd especially welcome perspectives from people who are producing/providing video clips.

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